Lessons in Friendship 2 - Touches
by PiercedBlueCat
Summary: After SiB. Sherlock trying to practise and get used to be touched. NO slash! Just Sherlock trying to deal with something he doesn't like or understand.


**Lessons in friendship 2 - Touches**

_Summary: After 'A Scandal in Belgravia'. Sherlock trying to get used to be touched. NO slash! Just Sherlock trying to deal with something he doesn't like or understand. No First Person POV but almost entirely form Sherlock's side._

_Standard disclaimer: Sherlock, John and all other mentioned characters belong to BBC and the guys who invented them. I just borrowed them for fun. I wrote this for my personal delight and improving my english, no copyright infringement intended. No money changed hands __and no profit is being made.  
Un-beta-ed!  
Would love to hear what you think and if anyone wants to do a beta let me know.  
I wanted to do this in British English, so I'd like to know about any spelling or grammar mistakes._

_I have no medical knowledge and do not know if i followed the right procedures!_

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A few days after meeting Moriarty at the pool and having first tried to speak to John about his PTSD Sherlock was still in observing-John-mode. He watched John closer than usual but either John didn't care or he didn't notice or he was too busy with dealing with the events that had proceeded the first meeting with Sherlock's new archenemy. … yeah, no ones of those in normal people's real life…. Had been proven wrong. .. no, not really. It says normal, well, no normal here…. Well, John was jumpier than usual and sometimes seemed absent minded but that was about it. Sherlock took some time to think about what normal people did in their daily routine when there were people around.

While they were on a taxi ride back to 221b after they had been in the Buckingham palace (which had amused him more than he had ever thought possible… and the factor that John had laughed with him and obviously not only understood his jokes but even liked them was… delighting?) - whatever it was, it felt like friendship to him. Whenever he watched people he'd identify as friends there was one more thing he had never considered - they touched each other, quite often, and it seemed to go even unnoticed or was normal. Touching hadn't been normal to him, not even in his family members touched each other regularly. Though he knew that there was a study that says children need to be touched to grow up normally. Deprivation would damage them.

He had hated to be touched all his life. He didn't like how facts about them invaded his personal space, just because he looked, but being touched gave away even more about them, more than their looks and their expressions, and their smells, their voices and their posture. All of those he had to endure cause he couldn't walk around with closed eyes, clamp on his nose and earplugs in his ears all his life. But sometimes (and espacially as a kid) he felt like a voyeur. It wasn't their fault and it wasn't his, but he didn't like it when their facts invaded his private space even more than they already did. When somebody touched him it meant

a) he wasn't fast enough to avoid it

b) he gathered more information than he wanted

c) Sometimes there was even a slight feeling of what might be panic, but he wasn't sure about that. It was uneasiness at least.

When he grew up he learned to endure it when it happened, but it was always enduring, not even neutral with most parts of his family. Of course he knew lost of people considered being touched to be comforted and liked it - as long as it was meant to be by the giving side. He wondered if he could ever get to the point were he wouldn't have to endure it.

He himself touched people only when really necessary - and liked to keep his gloves on for that or even put them on when he had to shake somebody's hand. He felt his privacy invaded by handshakes, and it was also a way to transmit germs perfectly.

A few months ago he had seen how people reacted to him almost fleeing a room in the try to evade being touched. It made them think he was a freak even more than they already did. Now he wondered if there was a need to practicing being touched and giving touches was needed. Dulling via repetition might help… and maybe there was anther positive effect. Maybe when he entrusted John with this vulnerability of his it was an sign of trust to the doctor. As so often John was chosen as the one to practice with. But this time not only just because he was there but because he was the only one Sherlock entrusted with the field.

As usual Sherlock didn't explain what he did, just did it, which caused several occasions where John rolled his eyes and was unnerved. But Sherlock feared it would compromise the authenticity of the results if John knew what he was doing and might react different than natural. Sherlock asked John to get his phone out of his jacket (while he was wearing it) no skin contact for the beginning. John reacted slightly annoyed, though Sherlock didn't know at first why. Had he stepped over a boundary? When? Could it be mistaken as a try to hit on him to ask him that?

But John didn't ask why and fetched the things, though his movements were kind of rough. Irritated the detective had asked to be more careful. The touch had made him tense and there it was again.. he endured it. Sherlock had been a lot more subtle after that.

Sometimes he asked him to hand over things and after a time John wasn't even annoyed any longer, or maybe even observing, trying to solve his own puzzle?

Other times Sherlock even tried to touch John, without any other intention to explore what it felt like and how difficult it was for him.

Then they were involved in the case with The Woman. Sherlock had tried to make John hit him, when John hadn't reacted the way he wanted he had hit him first in order to get hit back. In retrospective he had regretted it to have given John a negative association to his touch, he had just been too impatient and not thought about it. He himself had blocked out the pain expecting it since he knew it was coming, though was quite surprised when John had taken him into a sleeper hold and told him 'don't do such things' in his own way. He had realized this had been a crappy idea and John would fear it could happen again. He could see it in his posture afterwards for weeks.

Only half an hour later Sherlock had - for the first time in his life - felt comforted by a non-family member and as a grown-up, by exactly the same hands that had given him a small laceration on his cheek before.

Irene Adler had injected him with a sedative which needed only about two minutes to render him unable to move and five more to loose consciousness. Those seven minutes were quite interesting, though at that moment Sherlock found them more than discomfort, even experienced a hint of what might have been some panic.

She had not stabbed him but injected him with something.

While he felt the drug start to take effect she talked to him, but he wasn't really able to listen, he refused to let go of her mobile. The drug brought him to his knees unexpectedly fast but he held on to the designer-phone. Then she had hit him… with a riding crop. The pain was unexpectedly strong, sharp and blinding, absolutely stunned by it's intensity he lost control of his body and fell to the floor, only dimly aware of the impact with the hard wooden floor. The blazing agony made him grey out for a few seconds before his body's stress reaction kicked in and flooded him with humming adrenaline and his senses jumped into overdrive. Endorphins started to rush in a golden wave from his solar plexus in all directions, the pain-killing effects brought relieve. But he had no other choice than lay there, stunned, watching her with the phone in one hand and the crop in the other. She teased him. Consciousness started slipping and the limbs seemed to get number by the minute. He tried to fight the drug while she had the end of the crop in his face and was talking.

He was dimly aware of John coming in, god, thank heaven, John was there and fine. The rising panic had been nipped in the bud. John knelt down next to him and his fingers rested against his throats vein to feel for his pulse. The touch was extraordinary... warm, welcome, safe. A wave of relieve and gratitude washed over him, kind and caring. John looked worried and was talking, but though he understood John wanted an answer to something he was beyond speech, barely able to move.

John's presence was good, he knew his friend wouldn't allow him to be harmed in this absolute disgusting and vulnerable state. Was that how it felt to be comforted… by touch … and also in general, when it was working? The sharp contrast between the painful touches before and the soft good ones from John was stunning, alarming even. Following each other so fast emphasised the contrast. He had never expected it to be so intense.

John's face and touch vanished. Uneasy now. Not nice. He distantly realized John was talking, standing between Irene and him, then was no longer in his field of view. He tried to gather all his strength and with hard work he managed to lift his torso but fell back when the world started spinning. The contact with the floor hard.

The last thing before he finally lost consciousness was the return of a warm hand, on his brow now, another one at his chest.

"Easy.. don't try to get up.." John soothed and his touch accompanied him when everything slipped away.

He had dreamt about Irene Adler, discussing the case with her, even in his dream he had felt only half coherent and numb. There were distant memories of being touched but those were of the kind he had wanted to evade, but he was to weak. Her hands were on odd mixture of pain and caring, partly probably even meant to be pleasure but for his senses they weren't. Though he realized he was not afraid of her, in fact he liked her mind, but being touched by her was to wearisome.

When he woke up disoriented in his bed the shadows of her touches still lingered. Before he knew what he was doing he yelled for John, who appeared immediately at the door. … and he fell out of bed, first time for that… this level of non-coordiantion was disgusting, his body not following his commands.

John lifted him back to bed, caring like a friend but and instead of honoring it he was busy with hating his vulnerability and that John saw him being this pathetic.

Shame.

Embarrassed, exposed…

Damaged and weak.

He slipped back into the old behaviour pattern, swamped, not able to honor his friend's care. John offered to call him when he needed him, but his reply was grumpy and dismissing.

Exhaustion and frustration about the whole thing… and he also hadn't brought back the phone… more shame… he had blown it.

The woman had escaped, with the phone.

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_This will be continued in several short pieces… The titles allways start the same. _

_I don't like to post in chapters and this is not one long story. More like a study of different aspects of the developing friendship._


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